Riverdale‘s Season 3 finale dished out plenty of shocking moments, but it didn’t answer one of the biggest questions on fans’ minds: What happened to Luke Perry‘s character Fred Andrews?

Perry passed away suddenly during the filming of Season 3, and though Archie’s dad Fred made his final appearance on the show a few weeks back, he merely left town on unexplained business after that, and the show never addressed his absence in Wednesday’s Season 3 finale. (Molly Ringwald did return as Archie’s out-of-town mom Mary to offer the redheaded teen some parental guidance, though.) So is the plan to keep Fred off-screen for good?

“We will definitely deal with it and address it on the show… we’ll do it at the top of Season 4,” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa tells TVLine, adding that the delay stems from the writers’ desire to give Perry the kind of send-off he deserves. “We just didn’t want to rush in and do something before we had fully figured it out. We’d already written basically the end of the season, so rather than try to squeeze in something that’s so monumental and so important, we thought, ‘Let’s take the time to think about what we want to do, and do it right.'”

The plan to fill the Fred-shaped hole in Archie’s life may also involve bringing back Ringwald as a series regular. “[We’ve told her], ‘You’re welcome back anytime, as often as you want and as much as you want,'” Aguirre-Sacasa reveals. “We actually already had her scheduled to come back to Riverdale to visit Archie and Fred. When the tragedy happened, she said, ‘If you need me to stay, I’ll stay.’ And I said, “We’d love you to stay’… We’ve talked about Molly having a bigger presence next year to help her son.”

Were you disappointed Riverdale didn’t mention Fred in the finale? What do you think about Molly Ringwald joining the show full-time? As always, grab a booth in the comments.